McCain: It’s starting to look like a stalemate in Libya; Update: Obama says it’s a stalemate — but only militarily

posted at 7:30 pm on April 18, 2011 by Allahpundit

I wonder how much longer it’ll be before the word “partition” starts popping up in news stories. One of Qaddafi’s right-hand men told a BBC correspondent a few weeks ago that he thought the regime might accept the idea. All it would take is some new borders, a division of oil revenues, and, er, a constant NATO air presence to ensure that Qaddafi doesn’t roll east the minute western air power is gone.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said Monday he feared a “stalemate” has developd in Libya that would lead to a more radical government in that country…

“All we need to do is get sufficient air power in there to really nail Gadhafi’s forces, and we can succeed,” McCain said on KFYI radio. “A stalemate is a terrible outcome, because if you have a stalemate you open the door for radical Islamists to come in and hijack this revolution.”…

McCain, who emphasized that he, like Obama, would not support sending ground troops into Libya, said the U.S. is relying only on hope at this point to drive Gadhafi from power. The administration has said it will not forcibly remove him.

“Now we are faced with a situation where we hope Gadhafi will fall, but have no strategy,” he said. “Hope is not a strategy.”

I’ll bet Maverick enjoyed that little dig at his old rival’s campaign mantra. It’s almost disappointing that he didn’t add, “And Change is not a plan.” As for the substance, I’m not sure why he thinks total victory by the rebels is less likely than a stalemate to be a vehicle for jihadis. There’ll be an insurgency no matter which side wins, so mujahedeen eager to hone their battle skills won’t want for opportunities. He’s right, though, about how the lack of U.S. air power is hurting NATO. If you thought that nuclear powers like France and Britain backed by U.S. logistical support wouldn’t have much trouble with a third-tier Third World dictator, think again:

Less than a month into the Libyan conflict, NATO is running short of precision bombs, highlighting the limitations of Britain, France and other European countries in sustaining even a relatively small military action over an extended period of time, according to senior NATO and U.S. officials.

The shortage of European munitions, along with the limited number of aircraft available, has raised doubts among some officials about whether the United States can continue to avoid returning to the air campaign if Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi hangs on to power for several more months.

U.S. strike aircraft that participated in the early stage of the operation, before the United States relinquished command to NATO and assumed what President Obama called a “supporting” role, have remained in the theater “on 12-hour standby” with crews “constantly briefed on the current situation,” a NATO official said.

Decades of sheltering under the U.S. security blanket has left Europe without the AC-130s and A-10 Warthogs that would come in handy against Qaddafi’s ground forces, so the dilemma that’s developing for Obama is whether to take McCain’s advice and restore U.S. air power to the mission or play it safe politically and let Europe do what little it can to keep Qaddafi at bay. The risk in staying out of it is that Qaddafi’s attacks on civilians appear to be getting more ferocious as the stalemate drags on. Both Ajdabiya and (especially) Misrata are being pounded by rockets and mortars with no evidence of western intervention to push Qaddafi back:

“(With) all of this happening, we haven’t seen NATO,” Mohammed said, referring to the alliance that has led airstrikes against Libyan ruler Moammar Gadhafi’s military resources. “There have been no strike for four days in Misrata.”

Misrata residents are “disappointed and let down” by NATO, he said. “They hear NATO flying above, but Gadhafi’s forces do not run from them anymore. Gadhafi’s forces are not threatened by NATO anymore. The NATO planes are circulating as the destruction continues.”

More than 260 Libyans have been killed during the seven weeks that Misrata’s been under siege, but C.J. Chivers of the Times claims that in one triage tent alone, 50-60 wounded are being brought in each day with an average of 10 patients dying. Lord only knows what’ll happen if/when Qaddafi’s troops re-enter the city; ironically, because Obama and western leaders have staked the legitimacy of the mission on preventing a humanitarian disaster, Qaddafi may feel extra temptation to start killing people en masse. NATO’s going to have to decide whether it wants to deepen its involvement, replete with a renewed American effort, in an all-out effort to push Qaddafi back from rebel strongholds or whether it’s prepared to risk the horror of a massacre and a severe blow to its prestige. In lieu of an exit question, read this piece by Leslie Gelb about the lack of any good options remaining in Libya. Quote: “[A]s time passes inconclusively in Libya, it becomes harder still to convince Iran and North Korea that NATO is not a paper tiger.”

Update: Via reader Matt, I missed this on Friday. Skip ahead to 48 seconds in. Indeed it is a stalemate on the ground, says The One. But no worries: We’re squeezing Qaddafi in a lot of non-military ways. Whether that resolves the problem of preventing a humanitarian disaster in the near term, I leave to you to judge.

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Reminder. 20 days after Bush finally decided Hussein had to go, he was gone. and that was supposedly “unilateral”.
Now Qadaffi has stood against the whole world how long?
Despots are cheering everywhere.

Never should have gone into Libya. It was a mistake from the beginning.

Now that we’re in it, we should win it. But Barry won’t do that. So we’re in the worst of both worlds. NATO blood and treasure on the line to protect the new Bey of Benghazi. All because Obama missed a great opportunity to shut up.

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A note to the reader
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A note to the readers after 30 days of reports: I’m still deciding when the daily debriefs will have to switch to a weekly update. The amount of data and interesting facts is in fact decreasing each day while the comments you leave on each debrief and the email I receive are so interesting that they require a better analysis and more in-depth replies. For this reason, I suggest you reading the comments and replies on each debrief to follow the discussions that sometimes have become a continuation which add more interesting details to the daily reports.
In the meanwhile, beginning tomorrow, you’ll find the list of links to the previous reports on a dedicated page whose link will be the only one preceeding the daily recap. This should make the text easier to read (at least there will be no need to scroll down the page to find the beginning of the article).

Washington, D.C. –Senators John Ensign (R-NV) and Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) today introduced a resolution that would declare that the United States has no vital interest in Libya. The resolution would also assert that Congress has not authorized military force in the region, contrary to what the Administration says.

“As the situation in Libya has played out, I have been asking questions of this Administration as to what our role is and will be in the region,” said Ensign. “These questions have not been adequately addressed by either President Obama or his cabinet members. For this reason and because the Senate has yet to fully debate this issue, I believe that the Senate needs to pass this resolution declaring that our country has no vital interest in Libya so that we can get our servicemen and –women out of there once and for all.”

“The president should never commit our military forces to battle unless there is a vital national security interest at stake and without authorization from Congress. The conflict in Libya does not meet this test,” said Sen. Hutchison. “With our forces providing the leadership for combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, our NATO allies and the Arab league, which do have vital interests in Libya, should bear the major share of the costs and the burden for future operations there.”

The resolution does three things: declares that there is no vital U.S.-American interest in Libya; states that Congress has not authorized military power in the region; declares that the NATO allies and Arab nations that do have a vital interest in the region step up their military and financial contributions. Passage of this resolution by the Senate would express its disapproval of the handling of this intervention and serve as a warning against deeper military involvement in a conflict that does not affect our vital interests.

Expressing the sense of the Senate that it is not in the vital interests
of the United States to intervene militarily in Libya, calling on NATO
to ensure that member states dedicate the resources necessary to ensure
that objectives as outlined in United Nations Resolutions 1970 and
1973 are accomplished, and to urge members of the Arab League who
have yet to participate in operations over Libya to provide additional
military and financial assistance.
===================================

The (PDF)is a SECURE DOCUMENT,you have too click on the
link,to access it,I copy/pasted a bit above!

Our European “allies” are a joke. The U.K. fires 5 Tomahawk missiles at Libya and starts to publicly fret that its running low on Tomahawk missiles. We need a military alliance with India, and we should use the tsunami/nuclear crisis as cover for helping Japan to rebuild its military (and once that process is started, we should covertly supply them with all the nuclear weapons technology they desire).

His lines may be better delivered, but Barack Obama is sounding – and acting – more like the heir to George W. Bush than the change-maker sold to the public in his award-winning ad campaign. Indeed, when not sending billions of dollars to repressive governments across the globe, the great liberal hope is authorizing deadly drone strikes and military campaigns in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen and now, in his most morally righteous war yet, Libya.

Strutting out to a podium before an audience of uniformed military personnel – wonder where he got that idea from – a confident, some would say cocky, American president offered a fierce albeit belated speech justifying another preemptive war against a country that posed no threat to the United States. And if you closed your eyes, you could almost hear that faux-Texas drawl.(More……)

NATO Runs Short of Munitions in Libya: Report
April 16 2001
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WASHINGTON – NATO is running short of precision bombs and other munitions in its Libyan operation against the forces of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, The Washington Post reported April 15.

Citing unnamed senior NATO and U.S. officials, the newspaper said the shortage highlights the limitations of Britain, France and other European countries in sustaining even a relatively small military action.

But several U.S. military officials said they anticipated being called back into the fight, the paper said.

Washington pulled back around 50 combat planes from Libyan operations last week after handing over control of the mission to NATO, although since then they took part in some missions to take out Gadhafi’s air defense systems.

Currently, only six out of 28 nations are conducting air strikes, while France and Britain carry out half of them. The other half are conducted by Belgium, Denmark, Norway and Canada.

A senior administration official said he expected other countries to announce “in the next few days” that they would contribute aircraft equipped with the laser-guided munitions, The Post pointed out.(More…)

This McCain neo-con fool shouldn’t be anywhere near the political arena. We had 8 years of a failed neo-con war-mongering “hearts and minds” “nation-building” smokescreen regime, and anyone can smell their stench from miles away. The fools that voted for this despicable piece of garbage should be ashamed.

Sanctions NEVER affect the leaders much. Look at how even the goon in NorK worked the system to live very well while his nation as a whole starved. Saddam lived damn well. His nation starved and stagnated. Ghadaffi will live admirably well while his country starves. And Obama golfs on. We should take to calling him “Nero” except he uses a golf club instead of a fiddle.